40 Years Ago, Harry Potter Director Chris Columbus Created A Sci-Fi Show Nobody Remembers Today

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was not Chris Columbus' first brush with fantastical education. Two decades before Columbus directed the first "Harry Potter" movie, he created a sci-fi cartoon called "Galaxy High School" about a pair of human teenagers who become intergalactic exchange students and go to class with all sorts of strange aliens. These days, it's one of the many forgotten sci-fi shows of the '80s.

Premiering on CBS in September 1986, "Galaxy High School" followed popular jock Doyle Cleverlobe (Hal Rayle) and shy bookworm Aimee Brighttower (Susan Blu) as they attend the titular sci-fi school, only to discover that Aimee is now the more popular one while Doyle has to work harder impressing his alien classmates with his sports skills, and he's typically the butt of a lot of jokes. Nancy Cartwright, who would become famous as the voice of Bart Simpson later that decade, voiced a talkative extraterrestrial with multiple mouths named Gilda Gossip and a nearly two-dimensional alien named "Flat Freddy" Fender.

Columbus at this point had already found success writing films like "The Goonies" and "Gremlins." He returned to the small screen to develop "Galaxy High School" after Michael Chase Walker brought the concept to him and he was intrigued because he was a longtime animation fan. Don Felder, lead guitarist of the Eagles, wrote the show's vocoder-heavy theme song. It's not quite one of the best sci-fi theme songs of the '80s, but it has its charms.

"Galaxy High School" was, depending on how you define it, an anime. Though created by Americans — including future "Ren & Stimpy" creator John Kricfalusi — the Japanese studio TMS Entertainment did the animation. The Los Angeles Times praised the animation in a short review of the show in 1986, but it didn't have much else nice to say about the show. The paper panned the writing, especially the many mean jokes at Doyle's expense.

However, there was a bright spot when the 9th episode of the show, an anti-drug episode titled "The Brain Blaster," was nominated for a Humanitas Prize. But largely, "Galaxy High School" was not top of the class when it came to Saturday morning cartoons in the '80s. It did okay in some local markets but was often pre-empted by sports, which made it hard for it to grow a true fandom.

CBS canceled "Galaxy High School" after its 1st season of 13 episodes. Larry DiTillio, one of the writers, lamented what the show could've been. "The possibilities were limitless when we started," DiTillio said, according to cerealgeekTV on YouTube. "Sadly, there was also limitless conflict with the network over what the show should be. The writers wanted to do wild and crazy stuff, but the network was looking for a fresh, original, and innovative show that was also safe, familiar, and derivative."